I just want to say that at the 3:17 mark in the 2nd round, it sounded like someone hit the side of a car with a baseball...

:911flag: If you are lost, I will find you. If you are wounded, I will carry you. If you are pinned, I will cover you. If you are killed, I will recover and remember you. If you trespass against me, my countrymen, or my loved ones...I will kill you.

shields was working but couldn't make significant progress without taking a risk which would end up with him being on the bottom or miller standing up.

he simply couldn't find a way to finish it.

that's not planned, just the most sensible course of action to take in that situation.

You are being far too charitable to Shields.

I am certainly not complaining about Shields failing to finish Mayhem. I said before the fight that anyone thinking that Shields would finish Miller was high; Miller has too good a chin and too good a grappling defense to get finished.

What I am complaining about is that Shields barely even made a token attempt at trying to finish.

Shields had mount and back control on Mayhem for large portions of the fight. How often did he go for a sub attempt, even a safe sub attempt like a RNC that gives little chance of escape? How often did he posture up and throw punches that had a potential to end the fight? How often did he even throw punches at all?

Contrast his performance with Jacare - despite the fact that Jacare has an abysmally bad chin, meaning letting Miller escape to his feet was even more dangerous for him than Shields, Jacare constantly went for sub attempts, armbars, leglocks, and chokes every time he had a dominant position on Miller, and postured up for quality GnP when he was in mount.

Contrast his performance with Frank Trigg, another blown up welterweight - despite the fact that Trigg's ground game is nowhere near as good as Shields, meaning he was in far more danger than Shields was, Trigg still postured up for hard GnP every time he had top position on Miller, resulting in him hurting Mayhem and eventually stopping him (albeit with soccer kicks).

Contrast his performance with GSP - despite the fact that GSP was very green when he fought Miller and hadn't started training at Renzo's yet, meaning his ground game was quite undeveloped, he went for sub attempts, went for an armbar from mount, stood in Miller's guard and threw GnP and kicks, and otherwise made serious offensive attempts to damage Miller and finish the fight.

Shields, on the other hand, worked for dominant positions but made no attempt to finish whatsoever - he fought the safest fight possible, and while his caution was awarded with a win, his reluctance to make even a token attempt to finish resulted in violent hatred from both the live crowd and the viewing public - the crowd not only booed Shields during the match but also whenever he appeared for autographs after the show, and the segment containing Shields/Miller was the only one in which television viewers decreased by the overnight ratings. Moreover, this was not a crowd that mindlessly booed groundwork - there were cheers for reversals in the Werdum/Bigfoot match, there were cheers for Fedor's armbar attempt and Rogers' GnP, and there were even cheers when Mayhem attempted to choke Shields - this crowd was not reflexively booing anyone who didn't stand and bang, they were specifically booing Shields and his safety-first method to victory.

What I love most about that moment is that after Fedor clobbers Rogers, he pushes him to the mat with his shoulder. I realize that he was probably just following through on the punch and ran into the falling Rogers, but it looked mean and vicious.

Out of curiosity what is this based on? The Mousasi up kick? Besides that the only other time he's been ko/tko'ed was his first fight.

In his first fight Macaco hit him with a glancing overhand and instantly had him so hurt that he was on ice skates and almost falling out of the ring.

For reference, you can watch Macaco land a clean overhand right with his entire body behind it on Kazuo Misaki (who's been knocked down in almost every fight he's had, by notable power punchers like Logan Clark) with no visible effect whatsoever - he's not even close to being a power puncher. Pretty much any time Jacare's been touched on the chin he's been wobbled.

A Shields vs GSP fight would be worth a watch, but mainly because I love to see GSP fight. I can't really see Shields winning that fight at all, pretty much for the reasons already mentioned.

However Shields vs Alves or Fitch would be an extremely interesting match up. UpaLumpa has it right, GSP and Silva are so far in front of everyone else that holding anyone to their standard at this point is just counter-productive. Fedor would be the same if it wasn't for the fact that there are guys who outweigh him by a good 40lbs in his own weight division.

I sometimes wish that everyone would stop speculating about who GSP is going to fight at 170lbs. That way Dana White fearing a loss in interest would make the GSP vs Silva fight and we would see the biggest fight in MMA history.